Anyone who runs has a reason: Some do for the competition. Some do it for the fitness.

And some do it for the reason I do it, which is because it is the one time in the day - out there alone with just the rhythm of my breath - when I actually think about the things I ought to be thinking about.

This afternoon, for instance, I went out for a long one because I felt guilty about missing a few days. I got started and went down Glenwood Avenue and turned onto Valley Drive and was focused mainly on how creaky my legs have become, when boom: Something in the combination of cold March air and brilliant sunshine did to me what running often does to me, which is to instantly peel away layers of memory, and it brought me back to Niagara Falls in 1985, when I had just been hired by the Niagara Gazette. My wife and I went there to go apartment-hunting on a similarly brilliant March day, while big slabs of white ice floated down the blue river and went over the falls. It was a move we weren't absolutely sure was the right one to make, and the first couple of hours didn't help. All day long we went from place to place, despairing about finding something we liked, until we stumbled into this incredible flat, half-a-house for $250 a month, landlords living upstairs in this classic well-tended industrial neighborhood, and we walked out on this sunny day feeling as if our lives had changed ...

Which they had, because a moment like that leads to a moment today, when once again I was running along Valley Drive in Syracuse, remembering why I run in the first place.